San Antonio Spurs' Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green had LeBron James and the Miami Heat all wrapped up on Tuesday night's NBA Finals Game 3. Photograph: Robert Mayer/USA Today Sports

Kawhi Leonard has clearly spent too much free time with his coach. Much like San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich, Leonard seemed absolutely emotionless during his post-game press conference in Miami on Tuesday night. This, despite the fact that the 22-year old had just scored a career-high 29 points to lead the Spurs to a 111-92 victory over the Miami Heat in game three of the NBA finals. In fact, Leonard looked like he had turned in his third consecutive disappointing game rather than a performance that helped give his team a 2-1 series lead.

It seemed likely that if the Spurs were to pick up a tough win on the road, they would absolutely need a great performance from at least one of their best-established trio: Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. Actually, that Hall of Fame unit ended up having a rather quiet night, or at least as quiet of a night as you can have as part of an offense that shot 75.8% in the first two quarters of a game.

While obviously he didn't quite keep up that pace – if he had he would have challenged Michael Jordan's playoff record of 63 points – Leonard didn't fade away. In fact, as crucial as his early scoring might have been, in that it put San Antonio in the driver's seat and that dictated the flow of the entire game, his fourth quarter might have been equally important. Leonard essentially closed out the Heat near the end of the game, most notably a crowd-deflating run where he scored six unanswered points to disappoint those hoping for a comeback.

Blowout victories are usually not the result of one man, unless a team has a Kobe or Wilt, and the Spurs are built around the idea of not having a Kobe or Wilt. Game three was, in this sense, a perfect expression of the Spurs' philosophy that winning was a team effort. Nearly all of San Antonio's role players had their part in the basketball clinic that broke out during what was supposed to be a playoff game.

For instance, while it's not surprising that shooting guard Danny Green was making things happen in the NBA finals, the dude was the 2013 finals MVP in many, if not most, parallel universes, this time he wasn't doing it from the three-point line. (In fact, Green only went one-for-two from the three-point line, something which you wouldn't have expected to happen in the Spurs' greatest scoring night.) Green's contributions were most strongly felt on the defensive side of the ball, where he injected an element of chaos to the game that left the Heat befuddled. Green ended the game with five steals, many of them on LeBron James, whom he treated like how Bugs Bunny treated Elmer Fudd.

Then there was Patty Mills, the Australian standout who was nothing more than a towel-waving human victory cigar during the last NBA finals but who has since evolved into a steady NBA role player. His steal and subsequent pass to an open Ginobili, who knocked down the shot with about five minutes remaining, may have been the defining play of the game, much like Chris Bosh's late game three for the Miami Heat in their game two win. Before that moment, it still seemed like a winnable game for Miami, last year's game six makes it very difficult to fully count them out. After it, it seemed almost inevitable that the game would end with them pulling their starters for the likes of Toney Douglas and Greg Oden.

Or perhaps the play of the game was a bit earlier, when Marco Belinelli hit a three-pointer, the only shot he made in the entire game, to push the Spurs' lead to 84-74 after the Heat had cut the deficit down to 7.

If we're talking about players who may have made the difference, you could even attempt to argue that Gregg Popovich's decision to start Boris Diaw over Tiago Splitter was the direct cause of the Spurs' inexplicably hot half. There's not much evidence, but when a team makes as many shots as the Spurs did in the start of Game 3, there may not be a rational explanation.

Well, okay, it's not entirely inexplicable. As great as the Spurs were, that greatness was partly them exploiting the Heat's failures. Although James and Rashard Lewis did their best to keep Miami alive, and Dwyane Wade's final line looks a heck of a lot better than he did during the game, the team mostly looked out of sorts. Whenever it looked like the Miami Heat was about to go off on one of their signature runs, it seemed that one of them would commit a defensive lapse that would lead to a momentum-crushing Spurs score. When the Heat came up with promising offensive possessions in key spots, they would, more often than not, just fizzle out in a miasma of misses, turnovers and bad fouls.

History tells us, however, that this NBA Finals is far from over. After all, the Spurs went up 2-1 last year and that didn't prevent the Miami Heat from winning the whole thing. You can't expect the Spurs to play like they did on Tuesday again. Heck, you can't expect any NBA team to play like that in a Finals game again. Similarly, you can't expect the Miami Heat to look this bad again in this series. The Heat are their own worst critics, they know exactly how poorly they played in Game 3, and they will make adjustments for Game 4.

As NBA stats-type people everywhere said after the Heat's Game 1 loss, which apparently we're officially calling the "Cramp Game," the Miami Heat are on a long stretch where they have won every playoff game they've played following a loss. So they have reason to hope this series will be tied once more two days from now. Clearly, this is not a trend the Heat want to rely on when they're playing in the NBA Finals against a fearsome opponent that has already vowed revenge, but they only have themselves to blame for that. Well, okay, themselves and Kawhi Leonard.